Soul
by Annie Felis
Summary: Gray Voice once said that machines had souls, that they could think and feel and had wills of their own. How could the ramblings of an old Chozo make any sense? Machines are machines and nothing more...


The dizzy, fuzzy feeling of light-speed travel feels even more distant and attached, like I'm not in my body. I know it's getting worse. My body doesn't feel like itself anymore; it feels as if I'm trapped in an overpowered lump of flesh that isn't responsive when I need it to be, yet the world around it seems too frail and delicate to handle this powerful form. My own strength frightens me, frightens me more than anything else has so far. I know that I'm not relying on the enhancements of the suit anymore, not how it once was. The shielding to protect it and me is superficial, neither it or I needing much protection anymore. If it were possible for the chozo suit to protect me from this poison in my body, it would have expelled it long ago.

I raise my left hand to look at it while my gunship skims along the interior of the wormhole. They tell you that you're not supposed to move while travelling at this sort of speed, that the affects of doing so could damage your brain and central nervous system. At this point I don't even care. What could possibly harm me at this point? I'm no longer human, no longer a bioform that's attatched to the realms of reality. As I watch the blurry trails of existance skatter along the backside of my hand, I note that they're not the silver of my PED suit: they're blue. Blue like the energy that comes from my gun when I fire it. Blue like the inhuman eyes that are reflected back at me in my helmet's visor.

Blue like phazon.

At first it was such a shock whenever the substance would establish control in my body. It felt like cold fire burning in my veins, causing my limbs to tremble and my knees to buckle. I could feel it writhing inside me like the parasite that it was, clawing away at my body's matter to replace it with cells of its own design. It was jarring, unsettling. Upon the first time I entered a Leviathan and destroyed its core the energy ripping through me was overwhelming. I could feel it invading my blood, my bones, my stomach and as a wave of nausia came over me I thought I would vomit up my own insides for the way I felt. The spew was blue, and I supposed that the tears of disgust that brimmed on the edges of my tightly-shut eyelids were the same blue. I had not eaten in a long while, the phazon was invading every available space in my body...including my empty stomach. I hadn't had the need to eat, to sleep, to succumb to the various needs that a human body has...not since I woke up in the med-lab with the PED-suit on my body. No, the PED-modifications to what was normally my suit's Varia mode.

As time went on, the suit altered itself to match my biosigns. That is what it was designed to do, that is why it only responded to me. Only me. Years ago when I first recieved the suit as an irate whelp, I was told that it was created wholly for my body and for none other. Gray Voice was instrumental in designing and building the suit, and he was the one who presented it to me. I remember his whistle-click Chozo voice telling me sternly yet kindly that if I wished to succeed, then the suit would make sure that I succeeded. If I felt I would fail, then the suit would fail. He smiled in that avian way that Chozo do, letting his lower jaw drop slightly to put his beak agape. As he smiled he ran a withered claw-hand over the yellow contours of the suit and softly told me that machines had souls too. They could think and feel in their own way, he said. They understood you as well as any other, he said. I scoffed these words and told him that he was stupid, that machines were machines...that's why we were alive and they weren't. He shook his head, clacking his beak and told me that I had far too little understanding of how things were and I would learn someday. The suit would teach me otherwise, so he claimed.

I had thought Gray Voice to be odd and distant, even by Chozo standards. He was cold and calculating when in regards to regulating and managing the ecosystems on Zebes. I witnessed him destroy an entire field of flowers and the creatures living among them without a hesitation, only because the flowers "could be toxic". When I first arrived on the planet he was in favor of letting me die from the high air pressure and gravity; it was Old Bird who stepped in to suggest they alter my DNA so I could survive. He looked at living things as a piece to the whole, yet machines were different to him. They whispered some deep secrets that only he could hear, told him things that no other would understand. I remember as a child I would see him working with Mother Brain, both of them completely silent, yet he had his head cocked to the side as if his bird-ears could hear what that thing was saying.

The suit had never whispered any deep secrets to me. It has kept me alive, warned me of perils, shielded me from danger and responded to my biosigns. This was what it was designed to do, this is what it always had done. The insolant young woman who had told him he was stupid had since seen that machines are perhaps more than what we believe them to be, but I am still doubtful that this suit of mine has a soul or feelings. If it had feelings, wouldn't it care what was happening to it? To me? As I watch the electric-blue trails the phazon leaves from my waving hand, I think that if this damned suit did have a soul it would've done something already. It had idly sat by while it was torn apart and modified while a PED module was installed on it. While I wallowed in pure phazon, indulging in the sickening thrill of having its frigid heat burn through my body and tingle the corners of my mind, the suit did nothing. It absorbed the phazon as well, powering my weapon and repleneshing its defensive shields. It did what it needed to do. I needed phazon to survive, and the suit complied. Yet the phazon was killing me slowly, eroding at my flesh and sanity like ocean waves undercutting a cliffside. I know that sooner or later the entire thing that is my life will crumble down to become nothing.

Perhaps this is why I am going to the source of things, to this planet the G-Fed so quirkily nicknamed "Phaaze". I'm not certain how long I have until I too turn into something abhorrable. I had witnessed firsthand the barbaric regression of the three other Hunters assigned to this mission, how the phazon had turned them and eradicated any trace of who they once were. Rundus' ego and blunt jibes were replaced by bloodthirsty malace that did not seem sated no matter how much he killed. It was a sloppy and erratic form of fighting, born of an undenyable and uncontrollable rage that was no doubt fed by the phazon in his body. His hands had trembled as ice spewed forth from them, although I'm not certain if those tremors were from his fury. I think that some part deep inside Rundus knew what he was doing and had no control over it. He growled at me in rage as he hurled gobbets of ice with failed accuracy that was not the Rundus norm, missing me most of the time. I believe what I did to him was a gift. The final spasms of his phazon-overloaded body could not hide some movements to his body language that I could detect: in the end, Rundus was himself. He had to be, I know it. That spear of ice that drove through his middle was of his own doing, a Hunter trying to end himself before what small scrap of him remained was gone. I can think of no other reason why it happened. With the amount of phazon in his body, he could have turned on me with incredible power and obliterated me where I stood. I believe that Rundus' death was a gift to me, a mercy, a kindness. I keep telling myself that how I battered his body to that point is a kindness as well.

Mercy is not easy. I still felt shame and anger for the deaths of all three, all of which I was responsible for.

I know that it wasn't their fault, that it was the doing of the phazon...but it is still difficult for me to accept that I had a hand in it. I had remembered who they were, and to see them die as the creatures they had become was taxing on me. Gandrayda's youthful enthusiasm and flippant attitude were gone, and all that was left was a cold and ambitious monster that thought only of her own advancement. I know all that business about her being my rival was a young thing's fancy, that being a Hunter was nothing more than a game. I ignored her, doing my work as per ordered, accomplishing what I needed to regardless of whatever she said. She would laugh and say that I was such a work-a-holic, and she would call me Sammy when saying so. Gandrayda made attempt after attempt to get under my skin, and while she was successful at times I never gave her much response. It's in my nature to not say much, and I think that fact bothered her just a bit. She liked me no matter what attitude she assumed, I could see it in her. I suppose that I liked her too, for all her childish ways and carefree attitude. Her death left little imprint on me, despite my like of her. I resented what I had to do, but at the same time somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this was yet another part of the mission. It needed to be done, and I could worry about how I felt later.

This was not the case with Ghor. Kind, gentle Ghor who I knew longer than any of the others. Patient and wise Ghor, who had been a Hunter long before I joined and in a way guided me gently with advice and sage words so I would be prepared for the tasks of a Hunter. When I first met him, he was still partway human: he had a man's torso and remnants of a human face. His self-infusion with machines continued after I established myself as a bounty hunter, until he was nearly entirely a machine himself. He reminded me of Gray Voice in a way, always listening to that secret language of the mechanical and electronical, treating computers and the like as bretheren. If anyone had shown me that machines could have souls, it was him. While he was subject to erratic changes in mood due to his uplinks to various computers and machines, his core personality was the same. To see his mettalic hands kindly pat the cold silvery surface of his battle armor the way a mother soothes a child, I thought of Gray Voice doing the same to my suit when it was presented to me, when he told me that there was more to machines than most think. I believe that if Ghor and Gray Voice ever met, they would've found the same person in one another despite the difference in species. They came from two entirely different worlds, but they seemed to be kindred. Ghor made me think of Gray Voice and my childhood often when I would see him.

The last time I saw him, however...it seemed that any sembelence of that kind technological soul of his was eradicated. The whirling mechanical thing that crackled with phazon energy was not who I remembered. He gibbered words at me that meant nothing, cackling about his own phazon corruption and the progress of my own. I did what I needed to do and took him down, not holding back so I could possibly put him out of his misery much like I did with Rundus. I watched a ghost of phazon drift up and away from his body, mingling with the black smoke of the spent cybernetic limbs, and I unloaded as many rounds at the damned wraith as I could. They passed through like a stone falling through water, wavering the form of the being that I knew was driving Ghor into insanity but never causing it any harm. Then it shot up to the sky, the puppeteer finished with her puppet and leaving to extend her strings over yet another phazon-tained soul. I watched it leave, unable to smell the eletrical stink of Ghor's burning body, unable to do anything about it even though my gun-arm tracked it up through the Elysian clouds. I hung my head, ashamed that I could do nothing, not even for a gentle being like Ghor. I'm not certain how long I stood there, feeling defeated as my shoulders sagged beneath their heavy armor. A merciful death was not enough for Ghor. A merciful death was not enough for Rundus either, or perhaps me in the end. To die while completely insane seemed to be far worse than living as a phazon puppet for Metroid Prime to control. That thought suddenly terrified me, that perhaps my willpower would not be enough, that perhaps I would wind up like the others. Then resolve hit me like a hammer, and setting my emotions aside I stripped Ghor's smoldering corpse of its plasma weaponry, knowing that it would be yet another tool to use in this battle against the being others liked to call Dark Samus.

I refuse to call her that. No, it. Metroid Prime has no gender.

The mockery of light-speed from the wormhole stutters and stops, and the thrusters of my gunship bring me closer to this parasitic planet known as Phaaze. As I look at it through the ship's viewscreen, the computer's mockery of my own voice tells me that I have arrived at the designated coordinates, and the rest of the fleet is surrounding me and already engaged in battle. I don't know why they came, I don't know what they can hope to do. They wish to destroy the source of the Leviathan seeds, that's why I'm on this mission. I know that I can travel down to the surface of that planet without suffering from phazon poisoning unlike the others in the battleships, frigates and cruisers around me. The AU in charge of this operation contacts me and tells me what I must do, that I must secure a route down to the surface in the middle of the dogfight and destroy the stolen and thus corrupted Aurora Unit. I nod vaguely, only half-listening as I think of what happens after that. Then what? Does that mean that this planet will be destroyed? If AU 313 has indeed been integrated into the planetary system then it will...but that is only if Metroid Prime was successful at doing so. My ship shudders from entry into the phazon-laden atmosphere. I suppose I can think of this later.

The landing-thrusters engage and my gunship alights on the blue-black surface of this living planet. I ignore the alien glow of my own eyes reflected back at me in my visor and step off the landing platform. I can only take a few steps before my body responds to the phazon-enriched environment. The force of it makes my limbs flail jerkily, drives me to my knees, causes me to gasp and grunt in agony as the phazon eats away at my very core. This is it. I'm going to die. I don't care, although a small thought hovers in the background: what of the fleet? What of the other planets that will be infested with phazon? What of the people who will die deaths of madness like the other three Hunters?

A red message flashes at me urgently on the inside of my visor, and I muzzily read it through my pain. My suit is suggesting that I vent my energy tanks of their phazon in order to save my life. Without thinking of the consequences, my hand fumbles to the PED panel on my chest and I manage to press the emergancy release. My back arches as the scathing phazon is jettisoned from the storage units of my suit, its blue-tinged miasma clearing away like a fog burned off by the sun. As I watch it I realize that my last hope to survive on this planet is hazily wafting away and out of my grasp. With no energy to fuel my suit's defenses, my own body will soon be completely overloaded by phazon and I'll die. My suit suggested the most logical thing to do in order to save me, and yet it sentenced me to die by doing so. The irony is so much that I smirk beneath my helmet as I slowly rise to my feet. I can feel the corruption growing by the minute and I have little time left. I try to contact the fleet; nothing. My suit is purely running off the phazon energy within my body. It's communicator fails to work. I turn to my ship, and it denies me access. It no longer recognizes me as Samus Aran, my own gunship will not let me approach. The irony of the situation continues to build. A dying woman who is cut off from those she was sent to help now has to complete her mission alone.

If I'm going to die, then I'm going to die doing what I was sent here for.

My footfalls are strong, driven; I move with purpose as I stride through this twisted radioctive landscape. I no longer have a fear of dying insane, I know that I have too little time for that. I am not afraid of dying alone as long as I'll be remembered for doing the right thing in the end. The crackling blue energy that erupts from the end of my gun is like cold fire, mowing down phazon-birthed life forms like blades of grass. Little stands up to me in my advancement, as I watch the simple meter on my visor's interior slowly rise, like a pressure gauge on a boiler slowly climbing to the bursting point. It's like the sands of an hourglass, marking the footsteps and breaths and weapon rounds that whittle away the remaining moments in my life. I feel irritation at the Leviathan larvae that hide in their cocoons, evading me and wasting my precious time. This is not time I am meant to spend on them, this is time I am intended for a greater purpose. Blue lightning crackles from the end of the gun-arm, blasting the larvae and their precious gel-casings, destroying everything near them. A large hole is carved into the surface of this parasite of a planet from the force of my attack, and I look down into its uknown depths. Yes, that's where I need to go. I don't hesitate to jump.

I land in a bowl-shaped depression made of sparkling cerulean and craggy obsidian. The ground beneath my feet slips and retracts into itself, and I quickly contort into the morphball to avoid falling in. My compact state zips to the side and then I unfurl into my normal shape, eyes on the azure mist and light erupting from the hole. It rises, black armor reflecting back the cold light given off by the cavern around us, pale blue visor aimed in my direction. It sees me. It knows me, this creature born of scientific ambition and the desires of a sentient planet, this thing that has the audacity to take my form. It shudders, arching its back and throwing off crackling filaments of phazon lightning in a sort of challange to me. It knows why I am here. It is the one who planted this seed of corruption into me, who tried to overtake my body and mind with the electric power of a living substance. They call it Dark Samus, they call it "she", but I know better. I know what this thing is, I know it to be the results of Pirate experimentation on metroids. This is Metroid Prime, a unique specimen that through its amazing powers of phazon absorbtion can and has assimilated the weaponry of others at will. It's mockery of my suit is only a shell that covers a phazon-steeped core; it had stolen the Phazon Suit from me on Tallon IV, a thick layering of the substance built up on top of my own Varia suit. I had the fortune to blow much of this stolen phazon armor away in one of our encounters only to find that Metroid Prime had become entirely humanoid, with bones and veins and brains of phazon-flesh seen through gel-skin. I recall being unnerved by its blue-fire stare as it slowly reached out to attempt to touch me. It was a curious thing that wanted to know more about this odd being that was myself, a being that could conquer and dispatch it again and again, and yet it was an ambitious thing in wanting to know. I knew it wanted to understand me so it could defeat me.

It howls at me in a voice that sounds like a distorted version of my own. This is why it wanted to know me, so it could continue to assume my form. It revels in mind games, in trickery and subterfuge, using whatever it can to gain an advantage. I'm uncertain if this is the doing of the phazon itself, or of Metroid Prime's own will. It doesn't matter. These are my final moments. I will use them to their fullest.

After its clawed feet slam down onto the twisted surface of the cavern it comes at me with weapon fire. Always with the mimickry. Mimickry is just that: a copy, a fake, a wanna-be. It's not any match for the real me, for my gun, for my reflexes, for my suit. I return fire and I can feel that it's far stronger than what its being directed at me. The creature hisses and then laughs in the warbled me-voice, and I don't even know how as it lacks a mouth. Phazon is its strength, phazon is its weakness. It's like me, dependant on the thing that will eventually kill it. It tries more trickery, sending out blue-rhimed illusions of itself that circle and taunt me. I'm not fooled, my visor tells me which is the true one. It seems surprised that I could pick it out so easily, once again failing to understand how I can be so effective against it. The chortling creature rises into the air, body alive with phazon energy. Metroid Prime hurls a gobbet of writhing blue energy at me, and my reflexes are not enough to avoid. I scarecely feel the pain even though I can see the meter on the inside of my visor rise; it's a familiar sensation, a chilling comfort of sorts that makes my body tingle and feel alive and weak all at once. It fuels me. I stoically take a few more hits, charge energy within my gun until it rattles alarmingly on the end of my arm and then unleash the blast at the blue-black doppelganger.

The impact sends it tumbling, clawing at the ground as it skids to a hault, clawed hand and toes leaving ragged gouges on the obsidian floor. Its shoulders heave as it raises its head to look at me...is it breathing? That can't be right, it's still a metroid beneath that phazon armor. It isn't like me. It can try to mimick my movements down to details like breathing, but it isn't like me.

The cave wall behind it shudders and collapses, revealing something silvery and red lying recumbant on the floor behind the thing that likes to be known as Dark Samus. A large fat head made of metal and circuitry and gray matter slowly rises up on its spindly mettalic spine-neck, like a sleeping snake awaking to face an attacker. The corrupted Aurora Unit clacks shining titanium mandibles at me as it ascends, obediently allowing Metroid Prime to leap into it's red-glowing core CPU and become one via absorption. So, it can absorb into things as well. I tap at the console on my gun, disabling the safety setting that slows the rate of weapon fire in favor of letting the weapon cool. If I burn my hand, it won't matter much at this point. This is my mission. I will complete it.

AU 313 reaches out towards me with flailing indigo filaments, trying to do who knows what. It's far too slow for me, and Metroid Prime's decision to call it out to fight me was a foolish one: I'll wind up defeating it. I shoot down the purple-tinged tentacles, dodging clumsy laser-fire from the AU's "mouth" with ease. This thing was not designed to fight, it was not meant to be a weapon. My shots strike true, nailing the sensitive vent areas on the living computer's surface, causing it to overheat and flop over. I waste no time in rushing over and removing the top plate to the core CPU with my grapple beam. It clatters to the ground behind me, and I pay it no mind as my intent is on the AU itself. I unleash a barrage of phazon-laden missiles into the top part of the computer's cranium, noting that the delicate circuitry normally made of gold has now been completely replaced by phazon ore. Each missile leaves a small crater, damaging these circuits as rudely as I can possibly manage. My efforts pay off: it flails on the end of the thin neck, its movements jerky and lacking control. The spine fettering it to the ground snaps as the AU writhes, and by the blue crackling around its head I can tell that Metroid Prime is doing its part to repair the damage and take control.

A few segments of the metallic vertebrae remain hanging from the underside of AU 313, like the tail of a kite flapping in the breeze. It rises into the air, a lumbering leviathan that teeters as it hovers, its powers of flight limited. I know that it's Metroid Prime inside that's doing the actual flying, carrying the weight of the Aurora Unit with whatever godly phazon powers it can use. It seems all that energy is focused on keeping the bumbling thing aloft, and its cumbersome spinning movements and erratic laser-fire doesn't stop me from moving around the back side of it and releasing a volley of missiles at its exposed underside. The organic computer wobbles as it decends at an angle, its lone passanger unable to keep it in the air any longer. AU 313 crackles, twitching with phazon energy as one would twitch when overloaded with electricity, and then starts to revolve like a top. The remnants of the titanium spine scathe and spark as they are dragged across the shining dark floor, screeching with a jarring noise that vibrates my body within the PED suit. My arm takes aim and I attempt to hit its exposed CPU with charged shots, failing more than succeeding as far too many bounce off the protective exoskeleton of the AU. One of the spiraling blue projectiles richochets and nearly hits me, its crackling energy spreading on the cave wall behind me. The Aurora Unit spins faster, bouncing off the confinements of this mock-arena of a cave, picking up speed as it goes. I was wrong to think this thing too slow, it's now far faster on the ground, if only due to its inertia. This thought repeats itself in the back of my mind as I cannot dodge the whirling, flailing thing. Some unnamed extremity on it catches me and sends me flying.

The pain is jarring, shocking, not like phazon pain which is mingled with pleasure. No, this is an older more familiar pain...a pain that happened when I was still human. Little has been able to hurt me since my corruption began, little has made my body react like this. I can hear a cracking sound as I make impact with the shining blue-veined walls of the cavern, and I know it is not the cracking of my bones: it's my PED suit, what was once the Varia suit. There's no shielding to either it or myself, and both of us suffer for it. I grit my teeth and haul myself to my knees. No, I'm not going to lie here helplessly. A little pain is fine, it cuts through the phazon-euphoria that has been slowly taking over my brain since I landed on this damned rock. Metroid Prime has also underestimated me, as it takes my prone position as the apt time to command the AU 313 to rise into the air again. Another foolish decision. I lay there in mock-hurt, crouched on the ground like wounded animal, and watch as the thing turns slowly to aim its lasers at me in hopes of finishing me off.

Foolish. So foolish...Metroid Prime will never learn no matter how many times it fights me. It will never realize that the only time I'll give up is when both my body and mind refuse to move. It will never realize what makes me the stronger one.

I can see that the exoskeleton has been shorn away by its spinning dance on the floor; now the soft flesh of the living computer is visable and vulnerable. A laser hits the ground near me, missing me by inches, and I take this moment to quickly raise my arm and fire as fast as I possibly can. Alternating shots of phazon energy and blue-rhimed missiles hit the exposed gray matter of the Aurora Unit, both burning and splattering the flesh with each shot. It screams like a wounded animal, writhing in agony and quite possibly fear...if a living computer could feel such things. Its tentecles extend as it wildly thrashes in pain, phazon lightning blossoming out from the dying Aurora Unit, and I am hit by something I can't see. It's too quick for me to spot what hit me, but by the chilling pain that numbs my body I can tell that it's the excess phazon from the AU 313 as it dies. My weakened body flies through the air and I land hard on the hardened black stone of the cavern floor, the breath knocked from me.

In that instant, I realize that it is now fine if I die. I'm too weak to move, the phazon has taken its final toll on my battered form and I'm spent. I can hear the Aurora Unit as it twitches in its death throes at the other end of the cavern and I feel accomplished. I won't die mad, I won't die without completing my mission...I can be at peace now. My eyes close and I rest my head on the cold dark-phazon floor, waiting for the calm blackness to overtake me.

_No._

The word invades my final thoughts, stealing the serene feeling I had collected from accomplishing my mission to Phaaze. I feel irritation at this intruder, who would dog me as I hope to pass quietly from this life.

_No. You're alive._

I do not hear the words so much as feel them in my mind. They thrum in the back of my sore cranium, like a vibrating guitar string sounding out the same note over and over. I tiredly open my eyes and stare at the inside of my visor, only to see the familiar blue-white display with two unfamiliar words at the top: You're alive. I stare at the words stupidly, wondering if I had read them and thought that I had heard them, wondering if somehow a message from the G-Fed got through and these two words were all that they could pass along.

_You're alive._ My breath catches in my throat as the words form clearly in my mind, and I know reading those same words in front of my own two eyes is not why I can hear them. I feel my arms move, but not of their own accord. Something, someone is forcing my body to move when it doesn't have the strength to do it on its own. I'm somewhat alarmed by this but it seems that the movement is gentle, reserved. The two words fade from my visor's display and another thought invades my mind: _Look._

I don't know why I listen...but then again I don't know why this is happening. I raise my head to see what I'm supposed to be looking at, and what my eyes view is this: Aurora Unit 313 is shrinking, being compressed into energy, being absorbed into Metroid Prime as pure phazon energy. The AU is gone, leaving only the shining form of Prime there, staggering to its feet.

_Look. See._ I do as I am bade, less concerned with my mind's companion and more focused on my enemy as it tries to come towards me. Will it kill me? Will it try to reach out and touch me, to learn from me, to see what I am, as it had before? No. Its limbs gyrate erratically, the white-hot phazon lightning encasing it growing brighter by the second. Metroid Prime in the form of Dark Samus rises into the air, screaming in that horrible mockery of my voice, scrabbling at its face and torso as if to claw away the phazon that is ultimately its demise. It explodes in a bright flash, its radiactive essance falling like azure snow around me. So, perhaps it is finally dead...

A raw and unnatural pain suddenly claws at my very insides, like magma coursing through my veins. I cry out, arching my back stiffly as every muscle goes rigid in response. It's the phazon, I know. It has come to claim me, to make my final moments ones of agony. I grit my teeth and wait for the pain to overwhelm me, for the end to come. Through the pain I can hear the words forming in my mind _You'reAliveYou'reAliveYou'reAlive, _but I can scarcely pay attention to them as it feels my body is being torn apart from the inside.

Then the chill of the blue invader subsides, its scathing grip on me draining away as if some stopper has been pulled. The familiar electric energy that had slowly invaded my body simply goes away, leaving my phazon-numbed body feeling empty and weak. Not the weakness of phazon-withdrawl, no...the weakness of a body that has been pushed too far, that has not eaten or slept in a long time, a body that is human. I open my eyes, stunned. It's gone. It's simply gone. I can see a few motes of the blue energy rising from my body as I lay there, and I wonder if the destruction of Metroid Prime has anything to do with this. I hold at my abdomen as I sit up, wincing: I can feel that perhaps I have some cracked ribs. No doubt the phazon had made me unaware of how far I had pushed my body these past few days.

The cavern shudders, pieces of black stone falling all around me. What do I do now? Can I even climb out of this place with such a weakened body? I pull myself to my feet, grunting a bit at the pain and I look at my surroundings. Will I die here instead? My prediction was correct: it seems that AU 313 was tied into the planetary defense system, much how Mother Brain was tied into that of Zebes. This planet will destroy itself in a matter of moments, although this time my visor's display does not estimate a time limit for me. What do I do? This wasn't how I hoped to die.

_Run._

Annoyed, I look around the cavern. "I'm tired." I say the words aloud, not caring who does or does not hear me, as I feel that somehow I am alone in this horrid place anyway. I rarely speak, but somehow I feel the need to say these words. I see no one, I sense no one. It's as it always has been: I'm alone and it's up to me to figure out what to do. A tremor nearly knocks me off my feet, although I suspect part of that is due to the fact I barely have the energy to stand.

_Run._ The invasion of my thoughts continues by this unseen ally, and my annoyance at its simple-minded suggestions grows. Where am I supposed to run to? I almost voice this complaint out loud in my frustration and anger, but then the loud clattering of falling rocks stops me short. I turn to look at the pile of rubble, at the cave wall that has collapsed into a pile of scree that I can use to exit this prison.

The next word comes at me hard, commanding: _Go._ My legs start moving. I'm not the one moving them, it's as it was when my arms moved on their own before. Something is manipulating my movements again, something that has been telling me that I'm alive and that I should move and leave this place, something that keeps pushing for me not to die on this terrible world.

Could it be that Gray Voice was right?

I stumble, trying to run on my own with wobbly legs, wondering if the old Chozo's words were really true. Can a machine have a soul? Can a machine have a concience or a will, or desires? This is the focus of my thoughts as my knees give out once I clamber to the top of the cavern, to the planet's surface. The effort it takes for me to rise to my feet feels superhuman, and it's a wonder and a marvel that I can somehow convince my body to run again, to clear the edge of the collapsing cave. I fumble with my left hand at the controls on the back side of my gun-arm, to input the proper command sequence and summon my ship. The violent shuddering of the planet continues, showering me with azure rocks and like-colored dust. Not too far away I see a plume of liquid phazon erupt to the surface, like a jet of oddly-colored magma, and by the way it splatters and bounces on the blackened rocks I know it's just as hot. It oozes my way, the warning meter of my suit flashing and alerting me of the danger that I can quite clearly see, and I gimp my way away from it with a hobble-hop sort of run. I can feel the heat of it on the back of my legs and my helmet's broadcasts the crackling sound of the raw radioactive material. I don't look back. I never look back when I'm running, as I know there's no point. I wonder if my unseen savior that quite possible could be my suit is helping me run, or if my own instinct to avoid danger is fueling me along. It doesn't matter, as I'm running all the same.

I catch a glimpse of red and gold through the craggy rock formations of Phaaze's surface: my ship is coming. Its landing thrusters shoot jets of hot air to stabilize it, and the boarding platform comes out of the ship's bottom. It isn't even out all of the way before I jump onto it and hit the emergency close panel; there is no way that I'm going to wait for the sensors to detect my weight and close the damned thing. I fling myself in the pilot's chair even as it moves up towards the cockpit, and reach for the controls.

"Welcome, Samus." the ship says in a clipped and electronic version of my voice. "Input destination, please."

I grit my teeth as I feel the planet shuddering and trembling beneath the landing gear of my gunship. To hell with inputting a destination. I hit the manual override and take the controls to fly the ship off this rock by myself. Thrusters fired, I weave in and out of torrents of liquid phazon that erupt from great rents in the planet's surface. Red warning lights flash, indicating that the shielding has taken a hit and shield power is down. I don't care. I honestly do not care. I want to be free from this planet of phazon. I want to be free from what phazon has done to me over the past two years. I ignore the flashing panels and steer my ship straight up through the sparse blue clouds of Phaaze, harshly feeling the g-forces pull at my weak and injured body.

All about me the fleet is making attempts to escape. From what I can see, none will make it away from the planet unless the wormhole is engaged again. I feel cheated: could I have come all this way only to be trapped in the wake of the dying planet's explosion? What was all that effort for? Then I see a wavering stream of energy erupt from the tip of the Leviathan that the G-Fed aquired, and I know that some brave souls are on that vessel ensuring that the rest of us can leave. They stay behind to open the wormhole and ultimately die so the rest of us can live. There is no helping these casulties, and the fleet doesn't hesitate to enter the swirling hole in the fabric of space. A large plume of phazon erupts to my left, and I can see it consume two pirate and three fleet ships. More warning lights flash and vie to get my attention, but I don't need them to tell me that this is not the best of places to be. I come dangerously close to a larger frigate when I rocket into the wormhole, but my mind is not on the how but the why: I must escape. All that I had gone through on the surface of Phaaze would have been for nothing if I do not.

My ship's radar indicates that suddenly a mass of ships behind me and the rest of the fleet has vanished. So, the wormhole has collapsed and some were left behind to die along with Phaaze. People came on this mission knowing that they may not return. People came on this mission relying on me, on one lone Hunter, one solitary person sent in to accomplish what thousands could not. That is how the Galactic Federation works, that seems to always be their way: take a gamble when the situation seems dire.

Of course, through this all they gambled the life of a Hunter they thought would soon die. Why send and waste hundreds of troops when a Hunter dying a death of phazon would do? I stare ahead at the streaking lights of the wormhole and think of previous events that had sent me down a similar road. Why send many when you can send one? I don't doubt that my worth to the G-Fed is far more than what they pay me, as Hunters who succeed every time are a rare breed. This time, it wasn't about the money. This time it was about what I was thrust into, events that spiraled out of my control, things that altered my life. I felt that I would die, and that I needed to complete this last mission no matter how difficult it was. I was proving something.

I didn't die, though...no. Some guardian angel watched over me and gently nudged me to persevere when I had finally given up. I put my hand to the red metal of the Varia suit's chestplate, wondering again if Grey Voice had been right. A soul? Can a machine truly have such a thing? There have been various scientific explanations for what could be considered a soul, although what one could really be eludes us despite our advanced technology. A soul isn't a tangible thing to be measured with instruments and scanners; it's a thing of emotion and beauty and represents what a life is as a whole. I believe that I have a soul, that my stubborness is a result of that soul, that my personality and intelligence are so much more than sparks of synapses in my brain. The one who helped me in that cave had a soul, a soul of warmth and caring, a soul that after watching me refuse to give up so many times before could not bear to watch me resign to death so easily.

I know that Gray Voice wasn't wrong. I finally understand what he was talking about, if only a tiny bit.

A flash illuminates the cockpit of my ship and the various vessels around me erupt back into normal space, shooting farther ahead than my tiny gunship. Multicolored stars spin in front of my visored eyes as my ship slides a bit drunkenly out of the wormhole. I remember myself and take ahold of the controls, righting it and continuing to engage the manual override. The com unit above me erupts with sound as the fleet's ships start hailing one another. I don't care to contact the Olympus just yet, as I can see that many of the ships around me are damaged. Somebody attempts hailing my ship, but I don't respond. I'm exhausted yet exhilterated and the last thing I feel like doing is giving my report. I'm content to sit here and breathe, to feel my heart pump blood through my veins, to look at the pale surface of Norion and see my ordinary blue eyes reflected back at me from behind the smooth glass of my visor. The Olympus itself hails me, sounding urgent...what could they want from me? Can't they see that the rest of the fleet is far more important?

No, that's not right. One life or many lives, it's all the same: all of those present here in Norian space pulled through this mission and somehow survived. My left hand releases the controls of the ship as I reach up to the communicator, but then I hesitate. I still don't care to give my report. What is there to report? The planet is destroyed, wasn't that what they had hoped would happen? Wasn't that the best-case scenereo, that the source of phazon would die? I watch as the fleet continues on to fall into standard orbital formation around Norion and my little gunship is left by itself where the wormhole collapsed. The Aurora Unit from the Olympus hails me through my suit's communitactor, and I sigh at their persistance to contact me...although I do not sigh unhappily. I made it through and I was successful. My full report can wait until after I eat and rest at one of the nearby stations, after I take some time to myself to think on how I lived through this, and until then I'll send a message along to the flagship.

I take the controls again and veer my gunship to fly in front of the bridge of the G.F.S. Olympus. It's a bit showy, and I know that I'm perhaps a bit closer than they would have liked, but my bruised body is suddenly full of exhuberance for this life I can still claim as my own. I can see Admiral Dane standing on the upper deck, and as I zip past I see him raise a hand to salute to me. An Admiral of the Galactic Federation saluting a Hunter in respect...an act rarely seen. That thrills me all the more and I give him an enthusiastic thumbs up, even though I know that he cannot see it. He knows that I lived as do his men, and that solidifies this feeling of pleasure and pride that has been growing inside me since I managed to escape Phaaze. They can't see the grin behind my visor, they don't know that I feel as if I could begin laughing for the sheer joy of living. To them, Samus Aran is an engimatic woman with quiet and straightforward ways. The message I send in text to the Olympus keeps it that way: "Mission Complete". The secretive and mysterious Hunter remains even more so, and once again she is successful in what was to assigned to her. They will never know this giddy woman who sits in her armor with fatigued muscles and cracked ribs, who cannot stop smiling despite all she has been through, who feels blessed to have such a battered body in the end. They won't know that she was somehow saved from a demise that sickened and terrified her, helped by some unknown force that ultimately pushed her on to live. That life is far too precious now, and I know that from now on I'll look on to this existance of mine with a new appreciation and wonder for what it is.

I'm alive.


End file.
